


Berkano - The Earth Mother - PG

by BardicRaven



Series: Runic Cycle - House, M.D. [4]
Category: House M.D.
Genre: Gen, Medicine, Motherhood, Prompt Fic, Runes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-08-15
Updated: 2007-08-15
Packaged: 2018-03-18 08:59:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,124
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3563807
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BardicRaven/pseuds/BardicRaven
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <h5>Greetings!</h5>
<h5>The series goes on... prior entries can be found at <a href="http://mystcphoenxcafe.livejournal.com/2481.html">Naudhiz - The Ruling Passion</a>, <a href="http://mystcphoenxcafe.livejournal.com/2593.html">Mannaz - Mankind</a>, <a href="http://mystcphoenxcafe.livejournal.com/2820.html">Ansuz - Mystery's Master</a>.</h5>
<h5>Here, Cuddy muses on the children she has, and the children she has tried to have.</h5>
<h5>Thanks to <span class="ljuser i-ljuser i-ljuser-type-P"></span><a class="i-ljuser-profile" href="http://kidsnurse.livejournal.com/profile"><img class="i-ljuser-userhead"/></a><a class="i-ljuser-username" href="http://kidsnurse.livejournal.com/"><b>kidsnurse</b></a>for encouraging me to think about the difference between dependence and addiction.</h5><p><strong>Warnings:</strong> Vague, non-specific spoilage for S3, and misc. trivia given in S1/S2, rated PG for heavy thoughts and a few curse words here and there....</p><h5>
<em>House M.D.</em> and all related characters are the property of Shore Z, Bad Hat Harry, Fox, etc.</h5>
<h5>This particular variation on a theme belonging to others is mine.<br/>
Enjoy!<br/>
-Katrina</h5>
<h5>PS - As I watch more of S2, I realize that the timeline in this piece is not actually supported by canon, but it works so well here that I find myself disinclined to change it. -K</h5>
    </blockquote>





	Berkano - The Earth Mother - PG

**Author's Note:**

> ##### Greetings!
> 
> ##### The series goes on... prior entries can be found at [Naudhiz - The Ruling Passion](http://mystcphoenxcafe.livejournal.com/2481.html), [Mannaz - Mankind](http://mystcphoenxcafe.livejournal.com/2593.html), [Ansuz - Mystery's Master](http://mystcphoenxcafe.livejournal.com/2820.html).
> 
> ##### Here, Cuddy muses on the children she has, and the children she has tried to have.
> 
> ##### Thanks to [](http://kidsnurse.livejournal.com/profile)[**kidsnurse**](http://kidsnurse.livejournal.com/)for encouraging me to think about the difference between dependence and addiction.
> 
>  **Warnings:** Vague, non-specific spoilage for S3, and misc. trivia given in S1/S2, rated PG for heavy thoughts and a few curse words here and there....
> 
> #####  _House M.D._ and all related characters are the property of Shore Z, Bad Hat Harry, Fox, etc.
> 
> ##### This particular variation on a theme belonging to others is mine.  
>  Enjoy!  
>  -Katrina
> 
> ##### PS - As I watch more of S2, I realize that the timeline in this piece is not actually supported by canon, but it works so well here that I find myself disinclined to change it. -K

# Berkano - The Earth Mother

There are many days when Cuddy has no idea whether she wants to strangle her two eldest boys or hug them. They are not children of her flesh, of course, nature has not seen fit to allow that miracle as of yet, but of her heart. And, like most children, it seems to be a race as to who will drive her insane first.

House… brilliant, exasperating, troubled. She looks deep into fathomless blue eyes and sees the pain residing there, an open book for any who know how to read it, for all he tries to keep the world at bay with a sharp wit and a sharper tongue. She sees the pain, but there seems to be so little she can do about it. She does what she can, allows him more freedom than he would get anywhere else, some would say more than sanity would allow, certainly more than the hospital’s lawyers deem wise, but it seems like such an insignificant drop beside the ocean of his agony.

And Wilson, the Watson to House’s Holmes, the one who is supposed to be the calming, moderating influence, but who so often seems to be merrily sucked into House’s current caper instead. There is pain there, too, but so carefully hidden away that it is seldom seen, except in rare moments when he forgets for a moment that he does not have to stand between the entire world and its suffering, and anguished loss shines out from chocolate-brown eyes.

Both of them find the release from their private torment through their work, through antics better suited to children, and through their strange, screwed-up friendship. Sometimes, their works make her smile through the administrative frown she must wear. Sometimes, it is all she can do not to laugh as she delivers the reprimand that her job requires. And sometimes their needs simply drive her crazy. But she is grateful they have each other, for she knows they are two halves of the same whole - brothers of the soul and heart. And they have come to need each other in a way that both reassures and frightens her.

House… so angry at all he’s lost. Wilson… every patient taking a little more than it seems he has to give. She worries for her boys, these children of her heart, but again, there seems so little she can actually do. They live in a world of their own, one to which she is seldom invited. She smiles, thinking of wooden clubhouses with signs saying ‘No Gurls Alloud’ prominently displayed over the doorframes. The indulgent Mother, watching her boys, praying the future will be kind to them, knowing that it will not be.

She watches them strive to do and be their best, having risen to the top of their specialties with a drive and a passion she can only admire, even as she occasionally grimaces at the fallout. Staying there in spite of personal tragedy and the relentless march of time, the endless crops of newcomers biting at their heels, the new dogs in the pack seeking to bring down the graying alphas.

Cuddy understands wanting to be something difficult, something important. She is one of only three female Deans of Medicine in the entire country. And three times she’s had the beginnings of a life implanted in her… and three times she’s been disappointed. Sometimes she wonders if she’s cut out to be a mother for real, or if her failures to carry the small ones placed inside her are some kind of cosmic Hint that she is not supposed to assume this role on a smaller scale.

Goodness knows, she does it beautifully on a larger scale. In addition to House and Wilson, she is mother, to a greater or lesser degree, to the entire hospital. As Dean of Medicine, she is responsible for pretty much everything around her… the people, the budget, seeing that everything and everyone is where they are supposed to be. A mother to the world, or at least the small corner of it defined as the Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital.

She started early, recommending that House be hired back in the day, when she’d discovered that the man who’d been such a legend at the U of M had once again been fired for unorthodoxy and a savage dislike of incompetence and laziness. At the time she justified this to herself by saying that she knew he was that good, and would be a wonderful asset to staff, but in her heart she also knew that it was because she could not bear to see him as a broken-winged eagle, denied the freedom of the skies that he had earned. She had to help him fly again. And he has repaid that faith in full over the years, with a record that, if perhaps not filled with normalcy, is nonetheless filled with the names of those who owe their lives to him.

When she became Dean of Medicine, she gave him tenure, in apology for her lack of faith during the infarction. Cold, angry blue eyes said he knew exactly why she was offering this security, but she noticed he took it anyway. She covers his ass in all weathers, interceding with the Hospital Board, placating those whom he has managed to annoy or offend, sometimes outright lying for him, desperately hoping that, once again, he knows what he is doing.

Like now. Addiction. Dependence. Is the difference that makes no difference still a difference? An imprecision of speech to call him an addict, she will admit, but the result may be the same - if she cannot convince her eldest son to change his ways, to find some other way of managing his pain than drugs, it will destroy him. Whether it takes his liver first or his career makes little difference. Either way, he’s still just as dead. She holds no pretences about his desire to stay if he cannot do the one thing that still gives his life meaning. A healer has to know how to kill, after all… and it is so easy for a doctor to die.

And what would that do to Wilson? She’s not sure, but suspects that it would not be pretty, no matter what the outcome might be.

So she will fight the daemons tooth and nail for the life of her heart-son and his brother-in-spirit. She will fight using every trick she knows, clean and dirty and anything else she can think of. She may or may not be able to have a child of her flesh, but she will fight like hell to keep the ones of her heart safe.

 

Because that’s what a Mother does.


End file.
